A Coast trooper almost took down the world’s most powerful cartel boss. Meet Jason Gazzo.

Jason Gazzo’s mission was to rid the Gulf Coast region of speeders.

But in 2012, the third-generation trooper stumbled onto a Mexican cartel connection and nearly brought down its dangerous and elusive leader.

Gazzo had never heard of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, better known as CJNG, or its ruthless leader, “El Mencho.”

El Mencho — whose real name is Rubén Oseguera Cervantes — is hiding in Mexico and is now considered the most dangerous and wanted drug lord in the world.

The U.S. is offering a $10 million reward for the fugitive who commands an army of 5,000 members and whose cartel controls parts of Mexico and has set up shop in large and small American towns.

The violent but sophisticated “super cartel” has been detected on every continent except Antarctica.

Cartel members and associates weren’t terribly worried about the shrewdness of small-town Southern police back then, they later told investigators.

They should have been.

“They thought of Mississippi as farms, farmland and Barney Fife deputies,” Gazzo said after his monthslong investigation into cartel members and associates.

But this Southern lawman exposed a complex drug network that brought drugs from Mexico and California into the Gulf Coast. He also discovered a drug trafficker’s plans to establish a cartel cell in Mobile, Alabama.

What he found helped root out El Mencho’s hiding spot in Mexico and nearly led to the cartel leader’s capture.

A trooper stumbles into a drug cartel

Gulfport seems an unlikely target for a global cartel.

Here, families relax on wide beaches and watch shrimp boats fade into the gulf. It’s less than a two-hour drive east of New Orleans, so it’s a little Cajun with gumbo and po’boy eateries and a laissez-faire vibe.

But investigators understand that below the surface this town of 71,000 residents has an underworld appeal. It’s off Interstate 10, which winds from the Mexican border through Louisiana and into Mobile.

From Mobile, drug traffickers can hop on Interstate 65 headed to Nashville, Louisville, Indianapolis and Chicago — all cities that have been saturated with CJNG drugs.

Gazzo’s grandfather, father and uncle were Mississippi troopers, and Jason Gazzo never considered another career path.

As a kid, Gazzo blocked his neighborhood streets with his bicycle and pretended to write driving citations that cost his patient neighbors a quarter each. When he became a real lawman in 2003, that passion earned him a Trooper of the Year recognition and an upgrade to a charcoal Dodge Charger patrol car.

Those career highs would soon be eclipsed by the case of a lifetime.

In 2010, Gazzo joined Gulfport’s Drug Enforcement Administration task force. At the same time, across the Gulf of Mexico, El Mencho was in the middle of a bloody coup to overtake the Milenio Cartel and form CJNG. As the victor, he quickly began building his fortune through corruption, intimidation and extreme violence.

While El Mencho grew his empire, Gazzo was busy learning from veteran federal drug agents while helping conduct surveillance and interviews.

By 2012, agents got a tip that a woman from the West Coast was bringing illegal drugs to the Gulfport area. A DEA supervisor tapped Gazzo as the lead agent.

The agency gave him $16,000. He used it to arrange a drug deal from its lead suspect, the woman from San Jose named Maria Guadalupe Mendoza.

What the task force rookie discovered within a month shook them all: Gazzo uprooted the first known case in Gulfport of a drug network directly linked to El Mencho.

“Never in a million years would I have thought my first big case with DEA would end up being El Mencho and the CJNG organization,” Gazzo said.

‘It was going to put Gulfport on the map’

For months, Gazzo played the role of the “puppet master,” telling a criminal informant what to say when he met with Mendoza.

At first, she sold the informant a pound of meth. Then, she brought in 30 pounds — the largest meth shipment ever in Gulfport.

As Mendoza befriended the informant, she began to brag about her cartel connections. Soon, Gazzo and DEA Intelligence Analyst John Metcalf confirmed Mendoza was messaging several times a week with El Mencho.

“I didn’t have any idea this guy was basically one of the biggest cartel guys in the world,” Gazzo said.

“I’m sure some (veteran agents) were thinking: ‘Get this out of this little rookie’s hands,’ but they let me run with it.”

Gazzo consulted with veteran federal agent Benjamin Taylor, Gulfport group supervisor for Homeland Security Investigations.

“This was going to be huge,” Taylor said. “It was going to put Gulfport on the map.”

Mendoza, who grew up in El Mencho’s hometown in the Mexican state of Michoacán, dated the cartel leader and still considered herself his girlfriend, Gazzo said, though El Mencho lived in Mexico with his wife and children.

Agents say, in a male-dominated drug industry, Mendoza didn’t fit the profile of a typical cartel boss.

She had a petite frame, long blonde hair and perfectly arched eyebrows. But Gazzo said she ran a cartel cell in the San Francisco area.

The more they watched her, the more their investigation revealed.

She should have been too high-ranking to sell drugs in Gulfport. But something had gone wrong in California, and she panicked.

The 43-year-old, known as “Lupita,” fell out of favor with a powerful cartel plaza boss after someone in her network lost a load of drugs.

Mendoza decided to bypass security procedures and broker a large drug deal herself from the Gulf Coast instead of using underlings to assume the risks.

But once she arrived in Gulfport, she couldn’t persuade the cartel’s upper management to send her more drugs. Agents say some cartel bosses thought she was more deserving of a bullet.

Mendoza went straight to the top. She messaged El Mencho.

This is not the end of this story. To continue reading, click here to go to the Louisville Courier Journal’s website.